Keyboard Shortcuts Research Articles

A decade later: Creating single-subject design graphs with Microsoft Excel 2007™.

In Carr and Burkholder's article (1998), they utilized the graphing guidelines recommended in the manuscript preparation checklist in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, however, the most recent recommendations (2000) do not include all of the guidelines mentioned in the first article. Those which are included: Data points do not connect across experimental phase and the y-axis zero value is raised off the abscissa. Absent from the newer recommendations is the criteria that data points do not quite touch the lines between them. Its removal as a criterion indicates that it is no longer a requirement, and as such will be addressed, but indicated as optional, according to the 2000 guidelines. As Carr and Burkholder indicated, the utilization of a spreadsheet to enter, gather, and analyze data will prevent redundant data entry and save time on the part of the behavior analyst. In addition, Excel[TM] appears to be a widely accepted spreadsheet program. In the tradition that Carr and Burkholder began, this tutorial will provide very detailed and easy to follow instructions on how to graph reversal, multi-element, and multiple baseline designs; however, as in the 1998 article, rudimentary understanding of spreadsheet programs is necessary prior to starting. In this tutorial, there will be no need to prepare the toolbar as all instructions will be utilizing default settings of Excel 2007[TM]. Each action step will be followed by a sequence of keyboard shortcuts to illustrate and simplify implementation of the instruction for that step. The keyboard shortcuts consist of the names of the keys in brackets []. Two keys connected by a plus sign within the same bracket indicate that the initial key should be depressed while pressing the second key (e.g., [ALT+T] indicates that one should hold down the Alt button and press the T button). Two bracketed buttons joined by a dash should be pressed in succession (e.g., [ALT+T]-[T]-[P] would indicate that you should hold down the ALT key and press the T key. After releasing these, you should press the T key again, and then press the P key. Anything in braces (e.g.,{Axis Title}) indicate that you should input text. Thus, if you encounter [ALT]-[T]-{Name}-[ENTER], you should press ALT, then press T, then type in the name, then press the ENTER key. When you encounter a word written in all capital letters, that indicates that this is the name of a button, text, or icon you should click or press. CREATING A REVERSAL DESIGN GRAPH Entering Data into the Spreadsheet Data will be staggered across columns by phases. This will provide a means to prevent data connection across phases (without having to manually do this phase by phase). In addition, it will allow the use of Excel Functions individually per phase to create trend lines. Once you have Excel 2007[TM] open, complete the following steps to enter your data. 1. Enter the data for the first phase (e.g., Baseline1) in the first column and click on the cell in the following row. Repeat until all data for this phase has been entered. {data}-[ENTER] 2. For each new phase (such as intervention, intervention 2, return to baseline, etc.), enter the data on the next row and in the column to the right of the previous column. Repeat for each phase. [[right arrow]]-{data}. Creating the Graph 1. Once all the data has been entered, drag your mouse pointer from the top left cell to the very bottom and right of the data series just entered. 2. Click the INSERT tab on the Ribbon, then the LINE graph icon (8th icon to the right). [ALT]-[I]-[H] 3. A menu of different types of charts will appear. Click on the LINE WITH MARKERS (hover over each picture of graph and it will display the type). [L]-[ENTER] 4. A new graph will appear on the same sheet as the data as well as a new part of the ribbon labeled CHART TOOLS. …

ProofChecker

ProofChecker is a graphical program based on the notion of formal correctness proofs that allows students, both sighted and visually impaired, to draw a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) and determine whether or not it correctly recognizes a given language. Sighted students use the mouse and graphical controls to draw and manipulate the DFA. Keyboard shortcuts, together with the use of a screen reader to voice the accessible descriptions provided by the program, allow visually impaired students to do the same. Because the states of a DFA partition thelanguage over its alphabet into equivalence classes, each state has a language associated with it. Conditions that describe the language of each state are entered by the student in the form of conditional expressions with function calls and/or regular expressions. A brute-force approach is then used to check that each state's condition correctly describes all of the strings in its language and that none of the strings in a state's language meet the condition for another state. Feedback is provided that either confirms that the DFA correctly meets thegiven conditions or alerts the student to a mismatch between the conditions and the DFA. A student's DFA can be saved in an XML file and submitted for grading. An automated checking tool, known as ProofGrader, can be used to compare a student's DFA with the correct DFA for a given language, thus greatly speeding up the grading of student assignments.

Hidden Costs of Graphical User Interfaces: Failure to Make the Transition from Menus and Icon Toolbars to Keyboard Shortcuts

Graphical interfaces allow users to issue commands using pull-down menus, icon toolbars, and keyboard shortcuts. Menus and icon toolbars are easier to learn, whereas keyboard shortcuts are more efficient. It would seem natural for users to migrate from the use of easy-to-learn menu and icon methods to the more efficient method of keyboard shortcuts as they gain experience. To investigate the extent to which this transition takes place, 251 experienced users of Microsoft Word were given a questionnaire assessing their choice of methods for the most frequently occurring commands. Contrary to our expectations, most experienced users rarely used the efficient keyboard shortcuts, favoring the use of icon toolbars instead. A second study was done to verify that keyboard shortcuts are, indeed, the most efficient method. Six participants performed common commands using menu selection, icon toolbars, and keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts were, as expected, the most efficient. These studies show that even experienced users are inefficient in their use of graphical interfaces. One possible way to improve user efficiency is for training programs to provide a roadmap for users to make the transition from using pull-down menus and clicking icon toolbars to issuing keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard Shortcut Usage: The Roles of Social Factors and Computer Experience

Previous research (Lane, Napier, Peres, & Sándor, in press) has shown that despite the fact that it typically takes half as much time to issue a command to a computer application using that command's keyboard shortcut, most people issue a particular command by clicking an icon on a toolbar or by selecting the command from a pull-down menu. This study examined reasons why that might be the case with a web survey that focused on demographic characteristics of people who do and do not use keyboard shortcuts, as well as social factors of computer use that might influence use of keyboard shortcuts. Participants' shortcut usage was influenced by social factors, such as working in an environment with other shortcut users and experiential factors, primarily the hours spent using a computer per week.

Project Imperion: New Semantics, Façade and Command Design Patterns for Swing.

Project Imperion consists of a library of GUI elements that combine the command and facade design patterns to add new semantic meaning to some common Swing components. This simplifies the synthesis and maintenance of the code. It also shortens the code, while improving readability, speeding synthesis and easing maintenance. It also promotes better code organization, including the separation of business logic from GUI code and a logical grouping of the code along the same lines as its GUI’s appearance. Started in the late ‘90’s, in the DocJava, Inc. Skunkworks, the Imperion project was meant only for menu items using AWT, targeting the single application of image processing programs. It has since been reworked and extended to support the use of 16 Swing components with built-in keyboard shortcuts. The Imperion project was named for the Latin root, imperium, meaning the power to command.

Teaching molecular 3‐D literacy

Teaching molecular 3‐D literacy

Word-Processing “Efficiency”—By Means of Personalized Word-Frequency Lists

This article examines the concept of the efficiency with which text is entered into a word processor—from the perspective of effective use of keyboard shortcuts (sometimes called “hot keys” or “accelerator keys”). The article makes reference to the Autotext facility which is available in Microsoft Word. The article illustrates how the possibility for productiveness offered by shortcuts, available through the use of features such as Autotext, are often under-utilized by many word processor users, academics being no exception. The method involves constructing a word list from a corpus of one's own writing. This word list can then be taken as the basis for a personalized set of shortcuts of the most frequent words in an individual's writing.

Beyond WIMP

The WIMP (windows, icons, menus, point-and-click devices) graphical user interface (GUI) is not an ideal interface. Expert users find pure WIMP GUIs frustratingly slow and thus use keyboard shortcuts. In addition, they don't scale well-GUI bloat accompanies feature bloat. The most serious limitation, however, is that WIMP GUIs were designed for keyboard-plus-mouse desktop computing environments-environments that takes advantage only of vision and primitive touch. Our goal should be to design user interfaces that match our human perceptual, cognitive, manipulative and social abilities. We want to interact as naturally with computers and intelligent devices as we communicate and collaborate with each other and as we manipulate our physical environments. Indeed, computers are increasingly being used to facilitate human communication, collaboration and social interaction. Therefore, we should increasingly focus on human-human interaction, not just human-computer interaction. This change in focus reflects not only changes in the mode of computer use but also the increasingly invisible nature of the computer in our environments. New environments must serve as forcing functions to give us far higher expectations for user interfaces than we have had previously. Furthermore, the potential of future interfaces for handicapped people is phenomenal. Thus, despite the technology challenges, the greatest challenge lies in our understanding of human capabilities and how to incorporate that understanding into new design tools, methodologies and user interfaces.